Pale Days
by Calumniator
Summary: He's not really surprised he's dying in a warehouse, not really.


This was written for the semi-finals of the Quidditch a League Fanfiction Competition, with the main prompt of someone getting left behind and the additional prompts of snow, I just want to sell out my funeral, and flight.

Warnings: canon character death, minor slash

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Caradoc has always loved abandoned warehouses. He lived by the sea as a kid and would spend his summers threading his way through the ramshackle buildings on the wharf, the sky often bluer than the waves as birds careened in the air, their flight truer than any wizard's could ever be. That was what Caradoc had thought as a child, before he knew about potions and spells and Animagi and the like...and if he was honest, it was still how he felt as an adult.

When he got a little older he started inviting friends over in the summer. Benjy came, and Marlene (his mother had had a field day with that, he remembers, until he'd been brave enough to tell her the truth) and the Prewetts...although there came a time when it was just Fabian who came, always Fabian, and his mother's field day over _that_ was completely justified.

He and his friends would sneak out on pale (pale for the color of the air and the watery sun and the dull blades of grass flattened to the ground by the rain) days and climb inside warehouses any way they could, sometimes even making it to the roof before sitting down, their energy abating as they reached their destination. The sun beat down harder when they looked out from the top of a warehouse, and they always said little as they stared at the ocean. No matter who he was with, Caradoc would link his fingers together with theirs.

With Fabian it was different. They started out too shy to climb the warehouses, too shy to hardly look at each other...but never too shy to fumble blindly for each other, for clumsy fingers to grasp at the other's shirt as their lips pressed together, a new, confusing passion. When they did make their way to the warehouses it was always late. Neither of them said anything, but they both knew it was so they could swing their legs in the air and kiss at sunset.

The warehouse Caradoc is in now is a far cry from the warehouses of his summers. It is snowing, and he is shivering, back pressed against hard grain as he rubs his hand against his nose, trying to warm it. Winter and warehouses never mix, not for him. winter belongs with Hogwarts, with looming castles and a warm common room, with scarves and house elves and feasts, not with warehouses in the middle of winter. Winter is Hogwarts, not death.

He is slumped against the wall, but he knows he needs to stand. He was being chased, he recalls, they all were, chased through the streets of an old small town. He remembers the twins in front of him, Gideon on one side and Fabian on this other, Fabian looking back, eyes widening in terror as he outran Caradoc, as the Death Eaters closed in...

...and he turned, and now they were chasing him, he thinks, they chased him instead of the twins and Marlene and Benjy, which isn't fair, it isn't fair that all of his friends, from his lover to his friends to the Marauders are part of this war, because he has everything, _everything_, to lose. And they chased him to this warehouse, a warehouse where no one will ever find him, and he is freezing and he can hear them breaking his spells one by one, one step closer to killing him every second.

And he is scared. He can feel every fiber of his being thrumming, full of painful energy as his ears and nose redden and he shivers, wondering where the others are, wondering if he is really going to die here in a warehouse of all places, wondering how he can possibly die when he hasn't said goodbye to Fabian.

Caradoc is a big man, and he is glad of it. He is glad he can look frightening, because he doesn't want these Death Eaters to laugh. It is the laughing he hates the most, how they mock as they murder. Isn't it enough to slaughter in the first place? Perhaps, he thinks, laughing is the only reason that _can._

When the locks to the door are finally broken, when the Death Eaters stream in, Caradoc Dearborn is standing in the center of the room, wand out.

"We found him," says one Death Eater, the voice behind the mask not hissed or angry and demented. It is the voice of a human, and it is impassive, a man doing his job. And this Death Eater's job is to kill him.

"They left you behind," snarls another Death Eater. There is the malice he is accustomed to, the easy hatred. When Caradoc hears that kind of voice it is easier to kill them.

Caradoc laughs. He knows his friends would never do that, not on purpose. He sweeps his blonde hair out of his face and grins that wide smile he has, the one his mother says lights up his whole face. Fabian often tell him he looks like he should have been a farmer, not a freedom fighter.

"We've got a live one here," says the first Death Eater, shaking greasy black hair that Caradoc refuses to recognize. "Are you so eager to die? We could strike a deal."

Caradoc raises his wand higher. "No," he says. "We can't."

"So eager to die?" wheezes the second Death Eater.

"I just want to sell out my funeral," says Caradoc, grin intact. It isn't true. Caradoc doesn't care how many people show up to his funeral, as long as the people he cares about are there, as long as they never had to attend another one.

If he even gets a funeral. They will never find his body, not here, they will never think to look. Not in a warehouse so far from the sea.

He's not really surprised he's dying in a warehouse, not really. The only way it could be more fitting is if he were standing on top of one, fingers interlocked with the man who is holding a wand to his heart.


End file.
